The muffled laughter of the camera operator accompanies its
jittery movements, as it sweeps upwards and across the façade of a
building on the other side of the street, in the opening shot of
Sven Augustijnen’s film Iets op Bach (Something on Bach,
1998). The camera peers into several windows to reveal here
and there empty offices and bicycle storage. It finally reaches a
set of windows that look onto a large, brightly lit and sparsely
furnished room, decorated with paper garlands and stocked with
snacks and drinks. A party seems to be in progress, and a dozen
people move around, chatting and gesturing animatedly. The
camera settles on this scene, alternating between close-ups and
wider shots, moving jumpily from left to right and back,
sporadically losing its focus. It shows us a fight between two
girls, while a man skips across the length of the room in ballet
moves, his open, printed shirt fluttering about as he twirls and
jumps. Outside, dusk settles into darkness, and the blackened
frames of the windows fragment the party scene: drinks are drunk,
conversations continue in twos and threes and games are played.
Occasionally the revellers all get up and briefly dance together,
ignorant, it seems, of the prying camera. Yet even at this distance
there seems to be something skewed about the party: the gestures
seem a little selfconscious, the gaiety somewhat excessive, the
lights just too bright. It looks like a pantomime as much as a real
party, and evokes those reality TV shows in which young adults
locked up together share exacerbated personal interactions
with millions.1 A bride shows up and
then a man with

Footnotes

This comparison can only be made retrospectively as reality TV
only became a staple of European television in the years that
followed the film’s making.↑

See Ludo De Witte, The Assassination of Lumumba, London
and New York: Verso, 2001. Augustijnen has recounted how,
during one of their encounters, Brassinne referred to De Witte as
his ‘spectre’. See, for instance, Sven Augustijnen, Spectres,
Brussels: ASA Publishers, 2011, p.4.↑